Sunday, January 29, 2017

Jax and I spent part of Saturday trying to reach the highest points around. Yes, it's true, in the first video I have to stop and take something out of my pocket to stretch out and make the climb. It's a rescue beacon which I bought middle of last year after the 4th of July incident but never took it out of the box. A few days ago though as we were hiking through Obstacle Canyon a boulder moved on me when I was jumping from boulder to boulder and I realized that had it moved a little more I would have been trapped under it so I broke the rescue beacon out of the box.

Saturday, January 28, 2017

Is a great hike I've done 10 or 15 times before. I'm going from an older computer to a newer one and I lost these videos until earlier today during the transfer. In fact Alf, Jax, and I did this hike last week sometime. Jax and I are always "glove fighting". I put a glove on my hand and Jax wrestles it on the porch or I take it off and we tug a war with it. So, whenever the glove gets near Jax he wants to fight it even when we're hanging off the side of a cliff. We need to have a talk. Much like Kobae however he's not a very good listener. The videos are entertaining.

Jax and I hang out at the lower house most days. There's lots of internet to use up as I'm still sending out highlight reels for last year. There's a big picture window for Jax to lay in the sun so we're both warm and I'm not burning wood. Between Last Hurrah and Base Camp one of the lots that I now own was occupied by a guy named Hall and his Native American wife. It's a mess over there but I suspect Doug who I bought Last Hurrah from just kept it because it's kind of interesting. I'm not sure I feel the same way. At worst a clean up is in order.

Friday, January 27, 2017

Jax (Desert Dog) and I hiked behind Last Hurrah again on Thursday except I tried to extend our range. The area we were hiking on had a lot of loose marble type soil and anything with an angle on it had an element of difficulty to it.With early afternoon, same as the day before the clouds rolled in the biting wind picked up and we couldn't find a way down the direction we were going so it was time to look for a canyon to drop into to get out of the wind.

Jax and I work are way down into a canyon and it reminds me of Obstacle Canyon from the day before but I don't see any of our footprints. After about ten minutes of hiking, there they are, our footprints from the day before. We had just gotten in today further up the canyon.

Thursday, January 26, 2017

Jax (Desert Dog) and I spent Wednesday hiking around Last Hurrah so we can find or make some trails to take guests on. The wind comes up while we're out there and it's biting cold so we drop down into a canyon to work our way back. We should call it Obstacle Canyon as it was all of an obstacle course for 20 or so minutes on the way back.

Friday, January 20, 2017

Alf, Jax, and I hike up to Three Guys on a Roller Coaster so Alf can get some pictures. On top is the coolest rock I know. If you put the camera just right you see the La Sal Mountains. In front of that an area called Behind the Rocks. In front of that a miniature version of Behind the Rocks. If you pull the camera back a little and Jax jumps into the picture you get a little better prospective.

Alf, who has been here several times in the past shows up and he brings me a sort of panoramic picture and it's cool, so I buy it. There's almost no pictures left at Last Hurrah. Then I'm thinking how cool a picture like that would look in some of my favorite hiking places.

Michelle and I meet and she drops off Jax. Says he really loves it here and maybe he really is a Desert Dog, not a Designer Dog.

Monday, January 16, 2017

When Jamie stayed at Base Camp a year or so ago he brought his drone and took some aerial video of Base Camp. This visit Base Camp is much larger and here's what he got. If the arrow doesn't line up right, click on the word Basecamp in the video to make it larger.

Wednesday, January 11, 2017

We spent all day Wednesday at the Main House. It's not really functional. There are six chairs around the dining room table and four more at the breakfast counter. Yet only a three seat couch. One bedroom has a bed that's a little more than a single but not quite a full. I put anything larger in there and one side is right up against the wall and the other on top of the heating vent. Lot of work to do.

Tuesday, January 10, 2017

When I started a new indoor soccer facility with Let's Play I lived it. I slept at the facility every night and when people would call at 3am to see what time their game was that day I'd answer and they were shocked somebody would be there 24 hours a day. I had to know the facility, the people that worked there, the people that played there and I had to know them quickly.

When I took over doing the books for Let's Play I got deep down inside them. The financials, cash flow, are the blood veins of the body of the company. Without positive cash flow the body struggles to breath and everyone is in peril. So since it was my job I had to know the financials inside out. I learned every utility bill and all the stats that came with them. I found I could take 12 months of trash bills and if I paid them up front before the year started they'd knock off a payment and my price would go down 8.33 percent, it looked good on my financials to show that I was paying bills way in advance even though in comparison to other bills they were small, and in those days there was no automatic debit of any sort so 12 times a year I'd have to do up a check, put it in an envelope, stamp it, and mail it off. It was time consuming. For years it was just Linda and I in the office with millions of dollars in bills every year so it saved me time to focus on other things. It turned out I could do the same thing with burglar alarm bills every year and so on and so on. Saved dollars, time, and looked good to the banks.

We had a rash of break ins at the indoor facilities and I had all the alarm companies call me when there was an alarm going off no matter what city and then I would call the managers unless it was San Diego or El Cajon and then I would go to them since I was closest. While I slept I could see myself in the dark going from facility to facility checking the location to make sure there were no bad people there. After a few months I could sense when we were going to get broke into. The problem was where we were getting broke into. One night I could feel somebody had evil intent at San Diego Indoor Soccer about a 20 minute drive from the house. I woke up and said to Linda "San Diego is getting broke into right now. I can feel them. When the alarm company calls tell them I'm already on the way and to send the police. At 4am as I got into my car in the driveway I heard the phone ring inside the house. I caught a couple guys that way. Another night I could feel we were getting broke into at a location but I couldn't distinguish it so I sat up and waited but the call never came. I was really surprised that my system had been out of whack and got a false alarm. Two days later Denver called and said they'd been broke into two nights before but they had been closed for two days and didn't find out until today and the thieves had figured out how to disconnect the alarm.

When I got Base Camp it took awhile to get there but I am in tune with the critters, the sounds, and all that goes on around the lodge. I can be watching TV and still detect the sound of a certain white-tailed antelope squirrel at the bottom of the hill telling me a vehicle is coming. One day sitting on the front porch I heard a oomp, ahh, oomp coming from a human male off in the distance. I knew it was the sound of a male on his bicycle coming down the sand hill and going over the handlebars. I jumped on my trials bike and got to the sand hill while he was still dusting himself off and checking for injuries. I said "Man that sounded bad. I just blasted over here to make sure you were ok." He said "Who are you? Where did you come from? I said "I just live a mile or so from here and i heard you go over the handlebars and hit the ground." He said "No you didn't." I said "Did you go over the handlebars and get the wind knocked out of you." He said "Yes."

Well there's a hundred more stories but this is a blog, not a novel, not War and Peace and I'm pretty sure you get the point I'm making.

This morning when I woke I emailed the title company to see if the docs had been recorded and did I own Last Hurrah. They said they had and I did. Now I have to know it so I gathered up some books and Rachel, Elsie, and I hiked over and hung out in the lower house for the day wandering outside occasionally and getting a little hike in. I read from a couple different couches, went through the bedrooms, the kitchen, and the like. There are some needs but it feels good.